111 | Don’t Put It Off

We have a tendency to put things off that could easily be done now.

We tell ourselves stories about how long the thing will take, how hard it will be, or how we just don’t have time.

But ultimately, none of it is true, and it’s just a block to achieving the goals we set for ourselves.

In this episode, let’s talk about a few real life examples of how this kind of thinking shows up and why it’s so important to turn it around.

Topics Discussed

• real-life stories of my clients and me putting things off
• why we put things off
• the self-fulfilling prophecy of thinking things will take a long time
• the truth about when you think you don’t have time
• being honest with yourself about why you’re putting things off
• the impact of putting things off

Listen to the Episode 

Resources mentioned

Episode 63: Leaving the Law (Why I Quit My Job)

Work with me

If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call. 

Connect with me

Social media: Instagram and LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

You’re listening to Wealthyesque. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. So today we are talking about the tendency we have to put things off that can easily be done. Now, often we believe things will take a long time or we tell ourselves that it’s going to be too much work or it’s going to be too hard, or we just don’t have time. So we put it off and ultimately we make the thing take a long time or be more work or be harder, simply because we put it off and don’t make time for it. Alright, so let’s look at a few real life examples of how this can play out. As you may know, in September of last year, I stopped practicing law. And if you didn’t know that and want to hear that story, you can go back to Episode 63 where I talk all about that decision and the reactions to that decision and all that good stuff. But anyway, after I left my law practice, I decided I wanted to switch my license to inactive but I was thinking that was going to be this whole long thing I was going to have to call the state bar I was going to have to be on hold it was going to require all this stuff. And I don’t have time for that right. I just knew it was gonna take a long time and so I kept putting it off. As I said, I left my firm in September, the beginning of September to be exact, but it was the end of November almost December when I finally actually looked into what it would take to switch my license to an active Do you know what it took to switch my license, an email, I finally looked up how to do it and all I had to do was send an email and I literally send the email like hey, I want to switch my license. This is my bar number. I want it to be effective this date and the lady emailed me back 10 minutes later, like Okay, it’s done. So this thing that I had taken almost three months to do took only 10 minutes when I actually sat down and did it. I could have had an inactive license three whole months prior, but I made getting to that result take longer than necessary, because I kept putting it off another example is one of my clients has been looking into life insurance. Well Actually she has not been looking into life insurance. That’s the thing. So we had talked about her looking into life insurance for her and her husband and is this thing that I would check in on periodically and she’d be like, oh, yeah, haven’t had a chance to do that yet. Yeah, I haven’t looked into it yet. I’ve been busy. And so I finally asked her, like what was holding her back and she was like, I just haven’t had the time like work is busy. It’s gonna be this long process, similar to me with my bar license, right. And so I was like, well, let’s just do it. Now. We have this hour blocked off for you to focus on your finances. Let’s look at it. When we did it. Guess how long it took her to fill out the form and schedule a call. It took 10 minutes. What is it with 10 minutes right? But it took 10 minutes to answer the questions on the questionnaire and then it’s at one of the representatives will call her back to actually move forward with the process. But getting started with that first step didn’t take nearly as long as what she had built it up to be in her mind right like what she thought it was going to take. Again, just like me she prolonged getting the process going simply because she thought it was gonna take too long and she was telling herself she didn’t have time so she kept putting it off. Alright, one more example. So this also happens a lot at the beginning of my coaching relationships with my clients, where they are resistant to looking at their weekly spending, like reviewing what they’ve done the previous week. So they think it’s going to take too long they avoid it they put it off they think they don’t have time to do it. But when you actually sit down and do it like if you’re looking at your spending weekly, which is what I encourage when you’re first starting out with planning your spending and being more intentional. It takes like 10 minutes 15 minutes max, right? It doesn’t take that long and it’s not that much to do because after a week you typically don’t have that many transactions to look at. Versus if you’re trying to go back through and look at your whole month’s worth of spending. Then it might take like 3045 minutes right and it is going to be more work and it is going to be more time consuming, but that’s only because you put it off for so long. And you have so much more to look at. We build things up in our minds and tell ourselves the stories about how long something’s going to take about how much work it’s going to be about how tedious it is. But we really have no evidence for any of that. Right? I had no idea what it would take to change my license because I’ve never done it before. My clients have no idea what reviewing their spending will be like at first because I’ve never done it before. But we make up these stories and ultimately, we’re the ones who end up making it take longer. If I had looked into switching my license to inactive when I first thought about it when I first left the practice of law I would have been done with it and 10 minutes. If my client had looked into life insurance, she might have had coverage by now. If my clients review their spinning weekly, they wouldn’t have as much to do when they finally do sit down to look at it. And beyond that. This whole story that we don’t have time is just untrue. I have plenty of time to switch my license to inactive, even if it was going to take hours to do it. But I chose not to spend my time doing that. Right. I chose to do other things instead. You have plenty of time to do the things you’ve been putting off to but you’re choosing to do other things. So whatever you’re telling yourself you don’t have time to do or you’re telling yourself is going to take too long or be too tedious or whatever. Whether it’s looking at your finances or planning your spending or looking at the details of your student loans or switching your credit card right whatever it is. I want you to be honest with yourself about what’s really going on. It’s one thing to tell yourself those things, but it’s a whole different story when you admit the truth. Like I have no evidence for how long or how hard or how tedious I think planning my spinning is going to be but I’m choosing to spend my time scrolling Instagram instead of doing it because we somehow always find time for social media and Netflix and going to dinner and a whole bunch of other things right. Again, looking at the example of reviewing your spending each week. Like I said, it takes 10 to 15 minutes. I know you spend way more time than that each week on Instagram or watching TV. But when you tell yourself you don’t have time, and you keep putting it off because you think it’s going to take too long. You make it take longer and you make more work for yourself because now you have more to look at and you also make getting to your goals take longer because when you’re first starting out with being more intentional with your spending, you’re probably not going to be very good at staying on track with your targets at first. Reviewing your spending regularly helps you course correct before you’re too far gone to fix it. But if you’re not reviewing your spending regularly, you end up over your targets, right you end up cutting into the money that could be going toward whatever your financial goals are. And another thing when you have open things on your list, they keep weighing on your mind. You keep thinking about them like oh yeah, I need to do that thing. It takes up mental bandwidth and drains your energy and this just really inefficient. I think that’s a big part of why lawyers are so tired all the time. Like I remember feeling really exhausted when I was practicing law. And part of it is that we are keeping so many things in our minds, juggling different tasks and deadlines and all of that. And I know that some of the things in your practice you probably can’t just get done right then right? It would be nice, but most legal tasks take a chunk of time and often you’re juggling multiple tasks at the same time. But you don’t have to add on to that mental load by putting off these things in your personal life that you could do very easily very quickly and get them done and you don’t have to worry about them again. So ultimately, the moral of the story here is don’t put things off. And if you do be honest with yourself that it’s not that you don’t have time you just have prioritize other things and decided to use your time to do those things instead. The longer you put the thing off, the longer it takes to get the thing done, and sometimes it actually does end up being harder or more tedious when you’ve made more work for yourself. If managing your money better is important to you make time for it. Don’t keep putting it off, especially because the time that it actually takes to do it. It’s probably much less than what you think. And if you want some help with getting your finances in order staying on track and not putting the things you need to do off for another day, head to rho thomas.com/call And let’s talk about how we can work together. All right, so that’s it for this week’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media. I am most often on LinkedIn under my name rho Thomas, and Instagram at I am rho Thomas. Subscribe to the show and leave a review both of which helped more people find the show and please take a second think of a friend or two who would benefit from this information and share it with them. As we close out friend, I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently week after week. You will continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.